


dream of you and i

by meminisse



Category: MASH (TV)
Genre: Dreams, Dresses, M/M, The William Christopher Eye Roll, bj is repressed as hell, can be read as a stand-alone if you really want i guess, prologue to Talls' fic!
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-26
Updated: 2021-02-26
Packaged: 2021-03-17 01:48:29
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,490
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29709798
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/meminisse/pseuds/meminisse
Summary: "BJ," you hear him say."Yeah." You look up at his face, but that's a mistake, because all you can see is how happy he looked in the dream, in white, in your arms._______Or, BJ has a dream and a freakout in that order.
Relationships: B. J. Hunnicutt/Benjamin Franklin "Hawkeye" Pierce
Comments: 6
Kudos: 43





	dream of you and i

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Talls](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Talls/gifts).



> Title from Jeff Buckley's "Dream of You and I." 
> 
> This fic is dedicated to Talls, without whom this would not have been possible. It’s compatible with ["my guy pretty like a girl"](https://archiveofourown.org/works/29497470)\-- it is intended to be read as a prologue but by no means is it necessary to have already read Talls’ work, although you should. 
> 
> Thanks also to A.S. for humoring me in the dms, always.

You're climbing the water tower and your body moves so easily it's like you're eighteen again, trying to show Leo that you're no chicken, that he can ask you to climb a house in the middle of the night and you won't flinch, that you have what it takes to be one of them.

You get to the top and take a deep breath. People rush around the compound, but there aren't any ambulances in sight— either a special guest, or a party, then. Fog floats through the camp; it's early enough that the sun hasn't it burned it all off yet. Normally this would send a pang through your chest, set you wondering what Peg's up to. But you feel giddy, lighter than air; you remember that you came up here for a reason.

You hear someone singing softly— not words, but the instrumental part of something familiar. _I know too well that I'm just wasting precious time… of da-da-da-da-daaah, dah-dum…._

You creep around the side of the water tower. Hawkeye stands in front of your mother's floor-length mirror, propped up against the rusting tank, fiddling with the sleeves of his long, white gown. There's a veil draped over one corner of the mirror's gilt frame— evidently he hasn't gotten to that part yet.

You watch him fuss with the sleeves; pluck at the bodice; twitch a fold of cloth left, then right, then left again; tilt his torso away from you, then back, as he inspects himself in the mirror. You feel impossible love for his long, thin fingers smoothing out the bump on his shoulder, for his scrunched-up brow as he notices a wrinkle at the waist, for his collarbones, exposed by the low neckline. It's too much for one person to bear, and even here, you can't say it out loud. So you wait until he's angled himself slightly away from you to creep forward and grab him around the waist, laughing when he jumps.

"Hi," you say, kissing his cheek. You prop your chin up on his shoulder and look at yourself in the mirror: you're wearing a suit, one that fits properly. You think that you make a handsome couple like this, him in the long white dress with its fine stitches at the sleeves, you in an unfamiliar red tie.

He makes a face at you in the mirror, but his grin is already taking over his face as he spins around in your arms to face you, and drapes his arms around your neck.

"You know it's bad luck for you to be here."

You feel yourself grin. "Don't worry. I replaced all the flowers in your bouquet with four-leaf clovers. It'll all cancel out."

Hawkeye laughs. "That's not—" you kiss his neck, and feel him melt against you. "—how it works," he sighs.

"Sure it is. If you'd paid attention in seventh grade, you'd know," you say as you kiss Hawkeye's collarbones. "It's simple algebra." He makes a noise low in his throat and gently pulls you back up by the collar.

"You're going to give me 'stache rash if you keep that up."

"Can't help it. It's not my fault the dress suits you."

He gently pushes you away. "Listen, you have to really want it."

You look at him a little dazedly; you can feel the heat of his palm on your sternum through your jacket."Want what?"

"Don't play dumb. Do you want it or not?" You understand, with the kind of extravagant clarity you can only have in a dream, what he's talking about, which is everything.

"I do," you whisper. "I do want this." You mean it. He sees it, and relaxes against you.

"Okay. But you have to be sure."

"I'm sure." He smiles and kisses you.

"If you're sure. Hey, what time is it?" Before you can answer, he pulls your wrist up to eye level, like your space is just an extension of his own body. "Eight-thirty! Goddamnit, Margaret's going to be here with the makeup any second now, she'll kill us both if she finds you here." He lets go of your jacket and shoves you lightly. "Go on, get out of here." You laugh and dodge before he can hit you with the veil. But as soon as you start to climb down the ladder, he calls your name.

You look up— there he is, with the sun fighting through the fog behind him. "Yeah?" you ask.

He leans down. Kisses you on the mouth. "For luck."

"Maybe it'll cancel," you say. He grins.

"Get lost." You watch him disappear behind the tank again, and you don't start moving until you hear him singing again: _we'd be… da-da-da-da-dum… so grand at the games…_

You jump down and hit the ground running, aware of every molecule of air bouncing around your lungs, your body more alive than it's been in years—

"Beej. Beej, get up."

You sit up halfway and rub your eyes. Hawkeye's perched on the edge of your bed, already in his bathrobe although it's barely light out, brandishing a towel. "Hawk, what's the matter?"

"Something's wrong with the pipes. There's only enough hot water for two more people to take a shower, and I called it on our behalf. So you'd better get up and get naked before everyone else stops respecting the law of dibs and declares anarchy." His collarbones are exposed, like they were in the dream. You've seen them a thousand times before. You can't look away.

"BJ," you hear him say.

"Yeah." You look up at his face, but that's a mistake, because all you can see is how happy he looked in the dream, in white, in your arms. You look down at your hands, clenching the blanket.

"You okay?"

"Yeah," you say, nudging him aside and rolling out of bed to search for your towel. "I'm okay. Just tired."

He's quiet for a moment. "You know, you were talking in your sleep."

You freeze halfway through taking your shirt off. "About?"

"Something about wanting something."

"Oh."

"…You gonna tell me what that was about?" He gets half in front of you, but you turn away.

"No. Drop it."

"You—"

"Drop it, Hawk. I mean it." You wince a little hearing the edge in your voice, but better that he get offended than ask too many questions. You don't look at him, but you feel him watching you, sizing you up— _probably another wife-related crisis._ After a few uncomfortably long seconds, he shakes his head and heads for the door.

"Okay, don't tell me. Who am I to stand in the way of a man and his enjoyment of a cold shower?"

You don't turn around, but you hear the door bang shut behind him, and his singing as he strides towards the showers: "I'm sure you hate to hear that I adore you, dear, but grant me just the same… I'm not entirely to blame… for you'd be… so easy to love…"

 _It was just a dream,_ you tell yourself. _Just a dream_ _._

*******

Your subconscious doesn't seem to get the message. Every time you look at Hawkeye for longer than three seconds, you see the dress, the mirror, the water tower. Happier versions of both of you. It makes you want to set yourself on fire, or the whole camp, or just the nearest flammable object.

Normally, in a situation like this, you would take a nap. Clear your brain. Avoid thinking about whatever was making you feel terrible. You've never had trouble falling asleep, not since your first week in Korea. Hell, it was a refuge— the darkness behind your eyelids is the same here as it is back home. But now, every time you lie down, you wonder if you're going to have the dream again. If this time you'll make it to the ceremony before you wakes up. Whether you'll kiss him in front of witnesses. What kind of cake you'll have. 

At least during the day, there are options when avoiding Hawkeye: you can skulk off to post-op, or crumple up some drafts of a letter to Peg, or go and harass Charles. But at night all you can do is walk around the camp, or doing chin-ups until your body feels like it's going to give out.

On the third night after the dream, you're pacing the compound when you hear Hawkeye's voice from inside Mulcahy's tent. You creep closer: "…worried about him. I don't think it'd be so bad if he were sleeping— for chrissakes, the guy could give your average house cat a run for its money, he loves to sleep. But I don't think he's taken a nap all week."

Mulcahy hums; something clinks against glass. "So he's more like a saber-toothed tiger than a tabby cat right now."

"Exactly. He needs eight hours a night to be happy. I don't know what the hell is the matter with him, but the lack of sleep isn't helping."

"Hm." They're both quiet. Hawkeye is probably fidgeting with whatever's on hand.

"Pass me another."

"Sure." A crack, like he's hit a bottle on the edge of a table, then the clink of a metal cap rolling to the floor.

Hawkeye laughs. "Hey, where'd you learn to do that?"

"Seminary."

More silence. You think you hear Hawkeye swallow. At last Mulcahy says, "Do you think there's something going on at home?"

"Probably. I mean, there haven't been too many wounded, and Charles has been keeping to himself, and I don't think I did anything, which means it's probably wife-related. Only he didn't start acting funny until two days after the last mail call, that's odd— normally he just gets right into the spiralling."

"And he's taking his feelings about his marriage out on you?"

Hawkeye sighs. "That's what he does. Because I'm here, and he's here, and she isn't." Your stomach roils with a strange mix of indignation and shame, because what does he know about anything? You want to step away but your body is conditioned to listen to Hawkeye when he's ranting, so you just stand there as he says, "And of course he won't fucking _tell_ me anything, so I have to chip away at him for nine hours before I get him to actually talk about what's wrong so that he doesn't explode on everyone else. And that's not even the worst of it— you remember the last time, with the gutters and the handyman— whatshisface, Kurt or something?"

"I believe it was Carl, but yes."

"You know, the way his marriage works… I don't know. It's—" Hawkeye stops. When he speaks again, his voice sounds a little raw. "You ever wanted to get married, Father?"

You frown at the jump in topic, but Mulcahy only laughs. It sounds a little sad. "I try not to dwell too hard on things that are impossible."

"No, I mean have you ever— have you ever _wanted_ to marry someone? Even if you knew it wasn't possible for you to do so?"

Mulcahy sighs. "Yes. Twice." A pause. "You know… I was a very melodramatic young man— but I remember thinking that it had to be one of the worst feelings in the world. To know that you wanted someone and couldn't have them because of who you were. To know that if you had only been born one way and not another, everything might be different."

"Yeah."

"But that's might." You decide you've heard enough for one night and head home.

When Hawkeye gets back, he's drunk enough that he doesn't even take his boots off, just flops onto his bed without so much as a pointed comment or a glance in your direction; you thank the god you don't believe in that you're not fighting.

But Hawkeye is sober the next day, and whatever Mulcahy said to him made him bold enough to accuse you of being a cagey fink with more complexes than any normal human being should ever have, so you accuse him of never knowing when to leave well enough alone. Things escalate, and within ten minutes, you're storming out to seethe in post-op while Hawkeye yells after you that you're acting like a "a complete and utter jackass."

The dream happened on Sunday night. By Friday, you're not speaking to each other outside OR. By Saturday evening you're starting to miss him, but saying that would require an apology, which in turn would require an explanation for your behavior that you don't have. So you do the next best thing: get drunk.

*******

Everything is fuzzy as you stumble out of the O Club, but you have a mission. By some miracle, you and your tenth (eleventh?) beer make it to Father Mulcahy's tent without falling down.

"Father," you try to whisper. It comes out as a hiccup. You lean against the door of the tent for balance as you hold your breath. Once the hiccups have subsided, you try again. "Father Mulcahy!" you hiss as you bang on the canvas, which starts swaying ominously. The support beams creak. "Father, it's an emergency!"

Scuffling in the tent.

"Who is it? What's going on?"

"It's me. I'm anonymous."

"Who on earth is _me?_ "

"You're telling me you don't know your own name?" You think this is pretty funny, but Mulcahy gives an irritated snort.

"Of course I— wait a minute, didn't you say there was an emergency?"

Suddenly you remember the mission."Oh, yeah. Father, I need to give a confession."

"It's two in the morning!"

"It's extremely urgent. But I have to do it outside, and you have to stay inside."

"My son, have you hurt someone?" _Well, Hawkeye isn't speaking to me anymore, and he keeps giving me these wounded looks, and he's worried enough that he went to you, so yeah, I'd say I've hurt him._

"No. Why?" It's only because you're drunk that you even feel guilty about lying to a priest.

"Are you going to hurt someone?"

"No." Your head is starting to spin, and the thought of falling down and breaking your nose is extremely unappealing, so you decide to sit on a soft-looking patch of ground. Once there, it's a natural step to rest your head on a mound of freshly-tilled dirt, and to stretch your legs out a bit into some leafy-looking things.

"Have you hurt yourself?"

"No." You take a swig of your beer and are surprised to find it nearly empty.

"Then I won't be obligated to report it to anyone. Whatever you have to say is safe with me."

"No."

A beat. "No?"

"No. I just. I can't…" The words aren't coming. You grind the heels of your hands into your eyes, like maybe that'll help. You try again: "You can't see who I am. I can't do that."

"Alright. I'm listening." You sigh and breathe in the smell of dirt.

"I had this dream that I was climbing a water tower. When I got to the top, I saw my friend. And in the dream, we were—" You falter; if you keep going, you won't be able to go back. But the words slip out of your mouth, all your normal self-control eroded by the alcohol. "We were getting married."

"I see."

"But I'm already married to someone else, and this friend of mine doesn't ever want to get married, because my friend doesn't think it's possible for hi— uh. For marriage to happen to someone like my friend. But in the dream we were both so happy… I wore a suit and he wore this long white gown with thin sleeves… You know, I don't know if I've ever been that happy." You realize too late that you’ve given part of the secret away. Maybe the good father will give you the benefit of the doubt and assume you meant to say "she."

"In your whole life?" Mulcahy is probably raising his eyebrows.

"When I was little, and when my daughter was born. That's it."

"So your problem is that you're wondering what this dream means for your marriage?"

"No, no— I mean yes, of course I am, but dreams are just dreams! They don't have any basis in real life! The whole thing with me getting married to someone who isn't my wife doesn't mean anything if I never say or do anything about it."

There's a long, long pause before Mulcahy finally says, "My son, what exactly _is_ the problem?"

"The problem is that I can't look at him anymore!" you cry.

"Who?"

"Hawkeye! He reaches over me to get the salt, and I can't stop thinking about the dress. He asks me for a stamp, and I start thinking about how dream-me must have popped the question to dream-him." Too late, you feel a lump in your throat; you never should have started talking but you know you couldn't stop even if you tried. "It's driving me up the goddamn wall! I don't understand why I had to have this dream at all—"

Mulcahy sighs heavily. You picture him rubbing his temples. "My son, we don't control our dreams. That, at least, should be something you shouldn't feel guilty for."

"You don't understand— we _live_ together and I can't look at him, because I keep wondering what kind of lace he'd want on the hypothetical veil!" You swipe at a tear on his cheek and hate yourself for it— it really isn't anything to cry about— and then find yourself laughing bitterly. "God, maybe I should get a lobotomy. Charles would probably jump at the chance. Hey, if I get him to say yes, will you give me your blessing?"

Mulcahy cuts in: "May I say something?" He doesn't wait for you to respond before continuing. "Now, I'm no Dr. Freedman, but I think you're both roaring drunk and also suffering from— from a crisis of hypocritical belief."

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"When it comes to your wife, you say the dreams have no meaning. When itcomes to Hawkeye, the dreams have real consequences in the real world. You can't have both, and you can't move forward until you make up your mind. That's all the advice I have to offer you."

"But—"

"BJ, pick one, and get your feet out of my gardenias while you're at it."

You sit up. "How did you know who I am?"

You can practically hear Mulcahy's wry smile when he says, "You mean besides the various clues you gave me? I recognized your voice."

"Are you going to tell him?"

"Tell who? God? I think he already knows."

"Father, no offense, but don't be a fink."

Mulcahy laughs. "No, I'm not going to tell. This is between you and him."

"Okay. Thanks. And, uh, sorry for calling you a fink."

"You should have heard the names we called each other in seminary. They could have taken the ink off a Bible." You smile at that, even though he can't see you. "Get some rest, BJ. I'm here if you want to talk in the morning. And next time you're having a crisis at two in the morning, try and hold it in for a couple of hours. I get up at five-thirty."

"Alright. Thanks." You stand and brush the dirt off your clothes, and head for home.

*******

You scrub at your temples as you all get dressed the next morning to attend a surgical demonstration at the 8063rd. Charles is cranky because Potter wouldn't let him stay home on the grounds of being superior to any whiz-kid surgeon from Kansas, no matter how good the guy's track record is. As soon as he's shaved, he sweeps out of the Swamp to go sulk in the jeep without so much as a snide comment, leaving you and Hawkeye alone together.

Just yesterday, you might have been worried about this, but today you feel strangely peaceful as you each putter around your corners of the tent. _The dream didn't mean a thing. Just pictures on the insides of my eyelids,_ you tell yourself. _It doesn't affect anything if I don't want it to._

Just as Hawkeye turns towards the door, you reach out and grab at his sleeve. "Hey, Hawk."

Hawkeye spins around and looks at you warily. "Yeah."

"Listen, I'm sorry." Hawkeye pulls his sleeve away and crosses his arms.

"For?"

"For acting like a jerk. I had some stuff going on and I took it out on you. It wasn't fair. Sorry."

"As you should be," he sniffs, then hesitates. "But everything's okay now? You're not going to have a crisis and start breaking things?"

You smile. "No. I've figured it all out," you say, and don't even register the lie. "It's all okay. Sit with me on the bus? We can throw spitballs at Charles."

Hawkeye smiles and holds the door open for you. "But of course."

**Author's Note:**

> ...And now go read Talls' fic! Serious shoutout to them once again. I’d also like to thank “All I Could Do Was Cry” by Etta James, "Easy to Love" by Ella Fitzgerald, and “Desire” by Kamasi Washington for providing a soundtrack for this writing process.
> 
> This has not been edited so please let me know if you catch any glaring errors! I'm on tumblr as always @dykemulcahy; come say hi :)


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